“So there we were, paralyzed with fear with a frozen MacBook Pro screaming at us to do nothing except call this purported Apple support number for the only way to unlock it. Real or unreal? I can’t call the suggested number if it’s fake, but who else could lock it up so tightly if not Apple? Only one team comes to mind: MacMedics. They’ll know what to do to get us out of this. And they did, in about 10 seconds. It could have taken about 20 seconds over the phone if I had referred to the device correctly. However, the in-person service was immediate and courteous. Professional and complete with none of that technoid smugness from the IT cognoscenti. It wasn’t Apple support, and we were right: THE people to call and see for any Apple issue are MacMedics”.
Thanks to our customer, who was grateful for our help and left us this 5-star Google review.
Please spread the word about this. We hear about folks who get hooked by this scam and call the phone number every day. They often pay the $300-$1000 for someone to log on to your Mac to fix NOTHING!
Please, talk to your parents! We just saw one of our clients get scammed for $ 5,000 in gift cards, and then the bad guys said there was an issue with the gift cards, and they ran out and bought ANOTHER $ 5,000 in gift cards! They had every line in the book they were going to freeze their accounts, and the bad guys would get fired if they did not do what he said, and on and on with the lies!
Tell your parents and elderly relatives there is NO shame in stopping and calling you (or MacMedics) for help! And for goodness’ sake, if the word “gift card” is mentioned anywhere as a way to pay, it’s a SCAM!
If you get a message in Safari (like in this video) that says you have a virus, malware, or other problem and to call a phone number, it’s a SCAM! It will appear to lock your browser, so you can’t do anything else. Even if you force quit Safari, it will keep coming back.
Here’s what to do: Force quit Safari (Command + Option + ESC). When you re-launch Safari, hold the Shift key to prevent Safari from re-loading the scam webpage.
